ACAT What about “Citizens”?

Posting to Autocat

On 4/22/2016 6:48 PM, Nathan Rinne wrote:
Thanks for the response – that makes some sense. That said, wouldn’t local institutions, in general, for a variety of reasons, including financial, prefer to go with some kind of default option as opposed to having to decide how each subject is going to display?

This is the really tough part. It’s no secret that I am very skeptical of using linked data in the catalog. What I (and Stephen) have described does not require linked data–there are other solutions that are both much simpler and far cheaper. Still, since the cataloging community is traveling down that path, I think that linked data can be useful toward solving *one aspect* of using authority data within the catalog.

That said, although I can *intellectualize* how the new “heading/card” that I have described can function, I don’t have the slightest idea how it will work in reality, or even if it can. As one example, see an LC record I chose at random: https://lccn.loc.gov/2005910731 (I am excerpting from the record)

This is a fairly normal record and not especially complex. How can using a series of “cards” for each heading work in reality, or it could be that each part of the heading would have a separate card? (i.e. United States would have a card, and Confederate State of America would have another) No matter what, there would be lots of cards here, and it will make the Google example of Confucius look like a baby’s game in comparison.

If not “cards” what else would work? Add to this the facets, that the user will have to be able to search the catalog using the headings, and (probably) do something else to search for information from outside the catalog. That’s one of the ideas of linked data, after all.

Try as I might, I cannot imagine how a record like this, which is normal but already rather complex for a user, can become anything but substantially more complex with linked data. It blows my mind. This isn’t saing that it can’t work, but it will not be easy at all.

So Nathan, while I can intellectualize this I harbor the same doubts as to whether it can work for a living, breathing member of the human race!